“Then I hope that day may not be soon,” replied the man from the West.
“You may not have another one in years, and then again you may have one in a month. It is impossible to say,” was all the consolation Dr. Fox could offer him.
“If you wouldn’t mind, I’ll turn in here on the floor for the night,” said the Western man. “I’m used to roughing it. If you had a blanket, it’s all I ask.”
“I’d offer you a bed, if I had a spare one,” said the doctor; “but since you’re contented to stay here I’ll send you a blanket.”
This arrangement being quite satisfactory to Prawle, a blanket was presently brought to him by Meyer Dinkelspeil, and fifteen minutes later all was dark and silent in the surgery.
For a full hour there was no movement in the vicinity of the drugstore or the Fox cottage, yet all this time a form was hidden in the shadow of a big bush in the garden.
The intruder was Otis Clymer.
The night air had somewhat cleared his brain of the effects of the liquor he had imbibed early in the evening, and now his thoughts were busy with what he had seen and overheard in the surgery.
“If I could get hold of that paper—the option that fellow has on the ground where he discovered that valuable copper deposit—as well as the map and directions for locating the place, I should be a made man for life. I must manage it somehow. The man is doubtless asleep in the surgery long before this, and I have a duplicate key to the door which will readily admit me. Perhaps the fellow is a light sleeper and might hear me come in. That would be awkward for me, for he looks like a strong customer. Well, nothing venture, nothing win. It’s the chance of a lifetime. Then I shall want more money than I’ve got to get out there, not speaking of the $200 due on the ground. I must get a partner in with me, and who better than Dave Plunkett, who runs the joint where I’m stopping? He’ll back me in a good thing for half of the pickings. So, those boys propose going to the mine, do they? Ho, ho, ho! Not if I get my finger in the pie first. It must be one o’clock by this time. I’ll wait a while longer, and then I’ll make the attempt.”
Otis Clymer waited till half-past one o’clock, and then he left his damp berth under the big bush and approached the surgery door.